Since Russia’s invasion began, Ukrainian lives have been transformed — by violence, by loss and by the fight for a free land. The story of conflict is often told in battles and the cold numbers of the dead, in anecdotes of horror and lists of weapons. These photos attempt to pay homage to the personal fabric that weaves this reality together: the bonds of love that every soldier is fighting for; the knowledge that it may cost them their lives; the terror of losing who they love most.

For the past two years, I have been photographing the invasion and the nightmare it has brought to Ukraine. But as I traveled the country, I kept seeing the way love was holding people up, making it possible for them to defend their country when the world thought it would fall in days. The love stories I’ve witnessed are bright spots in the darkest of times. They speak to the cost of war in universal terms.

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    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In May 2023, Andrii was in a trench in the Zaporizhzhia region, attempting to stand to reach for a drone, when a mortar exploded at close range.

    Maria Petrovska was playing the bandura, a traditional Ukrainian instrument, to soldiers, trying to boost morale on the front lines, when she met and fell in love with another musician.

    They fell in love and six months later, on a June day in the pouring rain, Yevgen, whose last name has been withheld for security reasons, surprised Zoya with a proposal.

    They live with a cat, Plush, that Yevgen rescued from the occupied territories, and Zoya now volunteers to help the war effort, gathering and distributing supplies for displaced people.

    Artem Hutorov dreams of being a tractor operator and studying in Kharkiv, the embattled city known for its great universities and young Ukrainian artists.

    It took months for his mother, Natalia, to secure his release with the help of Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian organization specializing in aiding stolen children and bringing them home from Russia.


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